Leontyne Price sings the aria “Do not utter a word” from Samuel Barber’s VANESSA.
Listen here.
~ On a snowy night, in her mansion deep in the forest of a Northern Country, Vanessa awaits the return of her lover, Anatol. They had parted twenty years previously, and now he has come from afar, seeking her out.
Alone in her drawing room, she turns her back to him and – without looking at him – pours out her feelings…feelings which have been pent up inside her for so many years. ~
“Do not utter a word, Anatol, do not move; you may not wish to stay.
For over twenty years in stillness, in silence, I have waited for you.
I have always been sure, I have always known you would come back to me, Anatol;
I have scarcely breathed so that Life should not leave its trace and nothing might change in me that you loved;
alone, apart, unseen, I have waited for you.
Oh, how dark, how desperate, how blind, to let the days go by unmarked, unheeded!
How endless, how lonely, how wrong to rob a beating heart of time and space!
Beauty is the hardest gift to shelter, harder than Death to stay. All this I have done for you.
Now listen, listen,listen well: Unless you still love me, I do not want you to see me, Anatol.
Without love, do not dare look in my eyes! Because all change…all change begins when Love has died…when Love had died.
Tell me, Anatol, do you love me? Do you still love me as once you did?
For if you do not, I shall ask you to leave my house this very night!“
~ Text by Gian Carlo Menotti.
Oberon's Glade 